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Whose brand India is it anyway? You cannot sell India abroad if society is polarised and anti-modern at home

Could the imagery be more starkly different? Prime Minister Narendra Modi rolling out the red carpet at the snowy retreat of Davos, inviting the global business elite to India, promising that India was still the land of Gandhi, committed to inclusive development. Yet in swathes of Indian society, a brutal anti-modernity and aggressive traditionalism has taken hold; today there’s an unparalleled cultural and political regression.

Even Gurugram, which has more MNCs per kilometre than any other city, saw ugly nativist violence directed at innocent schoolchildren. BJP governments from Rajasthan to Maharashtra to Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh caved in to the thugs of the Karni Sena, refusing to stare down the cultural terrorists.

The government is keeping up a steady stream of publicity about its achievements, touting figures on electrification and infrastructure, the prime minister speaks on Mann ki Baat about empowering the ordinary Indian through Padma awards. Yet the ghosts of Partition have come to new life, repeated attacks on minorities prompting a group of 67 retired civil servants to write an open letter to the PM.

Illustration: Chad Crowe

Retired officers have written of their anguish at the axe murder of Mohammad Afrazul in Rajsamand, the death of 16-year-old Junaid on a train and of activist Zafar Khan in Pratapgarh, as well as attacks on carol singers. In the recent communal outbreak in Kasganj a Hindu was killed and a Muslim was blinded in one eye. The words of actor Meryl Streep were never truer: when those at the highest level of political leadership use divisive language, they only give permission to those on the street to be their worst selves.

Can the ruling regime ride the bullet train as well as the Hindutva tiger at the same time, and tacitly maintain the Davos-Kasganj divide in order to reap electoral gain? Can this duality be sustained? No prime minister has so far been able to do it. Indira Gandhi rode the identity tiger during elections in Punjab and Kashmir, but in the end the identity tiger took her life. Atal Bihari Vajpayee set himself on a consensual growth-oriented path but eventually the flames of the Gujarat 2002 riots singed Vajpayee’s commitment to rajdharma.

PM Modi has so far not uttered a word against the killers of Afrazul or Junaid, nor against the Karni Sena or on Kasganj. His silence could well be taken by the street mobs as complicity, even approval. Is Modi the artful politician strategically talking to two different audiences in Davos and in Banaskantha, where he implied a former prime minister was a traitor? Whatever his strategy, this duality cannot be sustained. Sooner or later a confrontation is inevitable between those trying to position BJP at the political centre and ideological militias pulling BJP towards its “core values” of Hindutva nationalism.

So far Modi’s been very careful not to alienate the Hindutva army. BJP guards its Hindu core vote zealously as seen in the recent ramping up of anti-minority rhetoric in the run up to the Karnataka polls. Election campaigns see tacit nods to Hindu evangelists from the PM whether it was “shamshan kabristan” during UP polls or the Congress’s Pakistan links in the Gujarat elections. But unless Modi confronts the zealots, his government will remain structurally incapable of delivering growth because of the repeated threats to public order and because of his need to appease them. A Gallup poll recently found that only 3% of Indians consider themselves to be “thriving” in Modi’s India, a bleak contrast to the Pew survey last year in which 85% endorsed Modi. This shows a growing socio-political churning in which the Hindutva revolution may no longer be quite so attractive, particularly to the young.

Entrepreneurial innovations and business confidence require optimism, intellectual freedom, openness and above all a government that cracks down neutrally on law and order. Political populism, which on the one hand leverages public anger and hate for votes and on the other massively expands the scope of government, traps citizens in a cage. Citizens trapped in hate, strangled by the state, can’t create the dynamic entrepreneurial country that Modi said he dreamt of in Davos. You can’t beat the statist Hindutva drum at home and the business drum abroad.

As Gujarat chief minister Modi did confront the Hindutva hotheads, but it was only after he was firmly in the saddle after winning the 2007 polls that he challenged the forces led by VHP leader Pravin Togadia. As prime minister, apart from the one stray comment remark against “anti-social” gau rakshaks his silence on Hindutva street armies has been deafening. Goons who bask in legal immunity and political patronage (as once happened in the heyday of the Left in Bengal) threaten the regime they serve because they alienate the public. All the CPM’s street-fighting men could not save its government once the public mood turned. Modi’s most serious opposition is within and his silence on the snakes in his backyard is taking a heavy toll on his government’s image.

If the government really wants to make India safe for business, it must first ensure that Karni Sena goons are prosecuted, chief ministers who were unable to prevent the depredations of the Sena are sacked and mischief-makers inciting communal disturbances are summarily jailed. These steps would do much more to reassure investors than stirring speeches in Davos. Brand India won’t sell abroad if Indian society is known to be deeply polarised and in the clutches of anti-modernism at home.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Author

Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for almost three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She has been a primetime news anchor and at present is Consulting Editor, The Times Of India. She is also a political commentator on the news channel ET Now. Ghose is the author of the recently published best selling biography of Indira Gandhi, "Indira, India's Most Powerful Prime Minister." She is also the author of two novels, both published worldwide.

Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for almost three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The . . .

Author

Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for almost three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She has been a primetime news anchor and at present is Consulting Editor, The Times Of India. She is also a political commentator on the news channel ET Now. Ghose is the author of the recently published best selling biography of Indira Gandhi, "Indira, India's Most Powerful Prime Minister." She is also the author of two novels, both published worldwide.

Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for almost three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The . . .